Sea of Poppies

I recently picked up a copy of the third in the Ibis Trilogy, [b:Flood of Fire 21375203 Flood of Fire (Ibis Trilogy, #3) Amitav Ghosh http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1443443366s/21375203.jpg 40675361], and given it was about 6 years since I read Sea of Poppies, and perhaps 4 for [b:River of Smoke 9783627 River of Smoke (Ibis Trilogy #2) Amitav Ghosh http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1310286525s/9783627.jpg 14673463], I thought I had better re-read these before the finale.I enjoy the writing of Amitav Ghosh a lot. I find his descriptive imagery builds up the setting and scenery as the story progresses excellent, and his depth of characters is great. While his writing s filled with words foreign to me - some common enough to be known, some not - including in this case a lot of nautical terms, I don't find this distracts from the narrative. If anything, this adds to the atmospheric writing, as in most cases these words are not central to the description, and not knowing exactly what they mean doesn't change the understanding of what is happening. Others may find the clutter of words distracting, or off-putting however, or be frustrated by being unable to find definitions for the unusual spelling of some of these words. For example:In this floating bazar there was everything a ship or a lascar might need: canvas by the gudge, spare jugboolaks and zambooras, coils of istingis and rup-yan, stacks of seetulpatty mats, tobacco by the batti, rolls of neem-twigs for the teeth, martabans of isabgol for constipation, and jars of columbo-root for dysentery: one ungainly gordower even had a choola going with a halwai frying up fresh jalebis.And to the characters - the novel covers a wide range of main characters, and it is fair to say that this first book is the background of these characters, woven is such a way that they all end up in the same place at the same time - on the Ibis, departing Calcutta for Mauritius. This book is almost fairytale in some of its characterisation - the good are good, and the bad are bad, but the woven stories are great. I enjoy the chapters being broken into small sections for separate characters, so we stay with each for only a few minutes of reading at at time. This allows the story to stay apace for each of them, and means we don't have to dip backwards and forwards in time, instead running over the various goings on almost concurrently.There a a lot of themes involving the characters of the book - caste is a major one, and of course the morals of the opium trade, British colonisation, and reinvention of ones self. There are betrayals, a fall from grace, an attempt at Sati (or a wife joining her dead husband on his funeral pyre), There is some well researched deception in the book too - two examples of this are the visit by Deeti to the Opium Factory, where the various buildings and their functions, as well as the workers jobs are explained in great detail; the other is on the Ibis, where the sailing, the terminology and the yelling of commands are all great. The prison, and the life in the hold of the ship are two other settings that come to mind as richly painted scenes. All come across as very believable for 1830's life.I have avoided comment so far on the abrupt ending to the book. For me this isn't an annoyance (although I remember it being the first time around), as the second and third books await, but it is fair to say that this book is really about starting the threads of the characters, building the background, and getting them all on their way out to sea. It gets us out of India, and sets up for the arrival in the new settings for book 2.I gave this four stars first time around, and that hasn't changed in my second reading.